title: How to Become A Successful Self-Taught Software Developer

slug: become-successful-self-taught-software-developer

meta: An answer to the question of the ideal path to becoming a self-taught developer.

category: post

date: 2017-05-14

modified: 2017-05-14

headerimage: /img/170514-self-taught-developer/header.jpg

headeralt: Header image for the blog post.

I received the following question via email from someone spending

significant effort learning how to code in anticipation of obtaining

full-time job with those skills. The question is also frequently

asked by university students and coding bootcamp graduates.

This post provides my current answer on how get your first full-time job

as a software developer. My answer assumes that the definition

of "successful path" for a self-taught developer is getting a

full-time position after investing so much time learning to code.

Note though that as I describe in my answer below, I took

[a more "traditional" route](http://www.mattmakai.com/matt-makai-resume.pdf)

to become a professional software developer. Therefore my response should

be only one of many that you solicit while working towards making the

leap from self-taught to professional software developer.

Go very deep in one area you really enjoy working after you learn the

fundamentals and get a broad overview of the language's ecosystem. Leverage

your depth in your targeted expertise area when you find teams that need

that skill to land your first full-time job.

Figuring out what order to go in when learning is definitely one of the

trickiest problems for self-guided learners. I'm not sure my answer to your

question is the best one that you can get because for better or worse I

took four years of computer science (CS) in high school, followed by

undergrad CS & grad school CS (while working as a full-time developer).

That route seems like the "traditional developer" background. However, I

will do my best to give an answer. You are definitely not the only person

who faces this issue.

I typically see self-taught and developer bootcamp grads feel like to

get a job they have to learn everything from the

[database backend](/databases.html) up through the

[web frameworks](/web-frameworks.html) to every new

[JavaScript](/javascript.html) frontend framework that comes out,

but that's definitely not true. When you land that first full-time

developer gig it will be because a development team sees you have a

particular skill that their team lacks and they need help with on their

project(s).

If you find yourself coding front-end stuff but wishing you could get

back to optimizing the database, you should focus on going much, much

deeper in database optimization. Learn as much as you can about SQL,

DDLs, DMLs, [ORMs](/object-relational-mappers-orms.html),

[PostgreSQL](/postgresql.html), database testing and performance tuning.

Constantly go deeper. Spend most of your time coding but when possible also

teach others what you're learning. Some folks prefer to teach by writing blog

posts. Other people enjoy giving tutorials at a meetup. You also mentor

others in-person or remote on video chats who are also new to software

development.

By teaching others you are not being purely altruistic: explaining

programming and answering others' questions will reinforce in your own mind

what you have learned and where your gaps remain based on the questions.

Experiment with code to learn more and continue to go deeper. Create a

feedback loop where you code, learn, write and find new unexplored veins

to learn more in that area.

You should be ready to start job hunting once you have a good feedback loop

where you are digging into your favorite subject area and are teaching it to

others in some way.

When you've gone deep in your subject, search for jobs that have a bit

of a full-stack flavor with an emphasis on your specialty. Reach out via

email to developers on the team or the hiring managers. Ask them for advice

on what skills successful developers on their teams have an what unsuccessful

candidates were lacking for their positions. Use their answers as data points

for what you may still need to learn when their responses are relevant to

the area you're going deep in.

When you feel you are ready, see if you can grab lunch or video chat with

developers on those teams to learn more about their work. If that goes well,

ask them if they'd refer you into the interview queue. Referrals will get you

much further than applying through a human resources resume collection

system.

Look for both software development junior roles and technical support

roles, if the technical support roles are at software-focused companies.

For example, [Twilio's Support team](https://www.twilio.com/company/jobs)

often hires folks who have limited development experience but over time they

can learn how to debug coding issues based on all the support tickets they

have to answer (along with continued self-paced learning).

Enthusiasm is crucial for obtaining and doing well in your first few jobs.

In hindsight, a lot of the enterprise software I worked on right out of

college was horrible, but it was all new to me so I soaked up as much

knowledge as possible while asking the tech leads and architects around

me a ton of questions. Enjoy climbing steep learning curves.

Keep your cynicism and any "I'm better than this" attitude in check

because companies have a ton of unexciting grunt work that needs to

get done. The grunt work will teach you how to become a better software

developer.

While looking for your first position, always be working on dozens of

potential opportunities and do not pin your hopes up on one specific

job. The goal is to get your first development gig that will help you

continue to learn, not to land your dream job. The dream job comes later

when you actually have enough experience to know what your dream job looks

like!

You will eventually land your first development gig. Then you will have

to constantly keep learning and the great part is that you'll get paid for

it.

What other questions can I answer and

[what additional topics](/table-of-contents.html) can I add to

Full Stack Python that would be immensely helpful to new folks who are

struggling to become self-taught developers?

Let me know via

[a GitHub issue ticket on the Full Stack Python repository](https://github.com/mattmakai/fullstackpython.com/issues),

on Twitter

or [@mattmakai](https://twitter.com/mattmakai).

How should I improve this blog post? Fork

[this page's source on GitHub](https://github.com/mattmakai/fullstackpython.com/blob/master/content/posts/170514-self-taught-developer-path.markdown)

and submit a pull request.